Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday October 19, 2005 @10:52AM
from the keep-your-peanut-butter-out-of-my-chocolate dept.

Martin Boleman writes "ZDNet reports that Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota, said his nonbinding resolution would protect the Internet from a takeover by the United Nations that's scheduled to be discussed at a summit in Tunisia next month. "The Internet is likely to face a grave threat, If we fail to respond appropriately, we risk the freedom and enterprise fostered by this informational marvel and end up sacrificing access to information, privacy and protection of intellectual property we have all depended on." he said in a statement."

Norm Coleman ranked very pro-freedom by the RLC. While he's still a Statist, he seems to have a lightly more freedom oriented strategy for the Senate.

The provisions for the Internet being taken over by the UN or any political body will likely bifurcate the Net into multiple separate networks still interconnected but ready to dissolve from those that censor or regulate the information more than the billions of users want.

My Internet doesn't need DNS as it is set up today. E-mail is dependent on DNS for now, but a combination of BitTorrent and LDAP will shut that need off if DNS gets ripped apart.

There are three reasons for government control of DNS:1. Censorship2. Regulation/licensing of certain speech (campaign, medical, educational?)3. Profit!!! (for the cronies who sell domain names)

There is zero need for any regulation. The Internet could be usurped by any big business but isn't. The ultimate proof of anarchy in action. Companies that try to control the users are beaten by those that provide open access. Companies that want to break free from the global structure will anger their users who want access to anyone else. Verizon could separate their phone network completely but its in their best interest to communicate with their competition.

The UN just wants monopoly power through force and coercion. The private corporations want to be #1 but have to constantly compete with others.

Norm Coleman is my Senator, and I must say that I have been pleased with his approach to consumer rights and technology in general. He's also a supporter of HR 1201, the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act of 2005 [loc.gov]. While people may disagree with him, I definitely think that he's making an attempt to look out for the best interests of technological advancement with his constituents in mind, and not a corporate pocketbook.

Are you kidding?- Most BT torrents reference trackers by domain name. Of course this could change, but existing torrents would break instantly if DNS went down.- Google links pages by domain names when they have them. They might be able to reindex everything by IP address, but it would certianly be nontrivial. Also, I'll bet you load Google via its google.com domain name and not by its IP address.- I'd also wager that over 95% of your bookmarks link domain names instead of IP addresses. Expect every one of them to break if DNS were to suddenly disappear.

DNS will never go away simply because business don't want to put raw, hard to remember IP addresses on advertisements when they can put www.mcdonalds.com instead.

You're mostly correct. Today, right now, DNS is needed. So are fax machines and Liquid Paper.

Yet the future of the Internet will only seek out more competition, fewer regulations and restrictions, and less dependence on older standards. I do believe the Internet could operate just fine without a central DNS authority. Yes, it would be an enormous problem if DNS broke today or even attempted separation, but it won't happen. Those who depend on the voluntary choice of their customers would immediately find a fix in the event of an outage or separation.

The US is wrong in wants to continue to control DNS root services. The UN is even more wrong in thinking taking control would make things better.

In the long run, newer protocols and information sharing services will give people the information they want without the need for DNS. Most people communicating over IM don't even see domain names. Most people communicating over BT don't either. As bandwidth goes up and newer forms of hive-communications are created, we'll see less and less central control.

I remember running my first BBS. 1 node. Local users only. No sharing of data with other BBSes and only 1 user at a time. Then multinode, then FidoNet, then UseNet, then Gopher, then E-mail, then WWW, then ICQ, then Napster, then BT, then ???

Information is getting less centralized or tied to a location in ever faste steps. DNS is ready for replacement.

Bittorrent is an itty-bitty part of the services available on the Internet. And if you let search engines serve as your source for finding the location of resources you need, how is that better than DNS? It seems to me that you're just swapping one directory service for another, the second being corporately owned and changeable at their whim. Besides, without DNS, how are you going to even get to Google? http://64.233.161.99 [64.233.161.99]? Or maybe you prefer http://64.233.161.104/ [64.233.161.104] or http://64.233.161.147 [64.233.161.147]?

Maybe you don't use DNS a lot, but the rest of the world sure as heck does. It's a basic network service that the Internet is almost useless without. Personally, I think it's pretty scary that one country that, frankly, the world doesn't find very trustworthy right now, controls it.

But I guess that's just me. Oh, and the rest of the world. (And for what it's worth I am American...)

Not to mention that DNS provides a nice layer of indirection. Change ISPs and you don't have to update everybody's bookmarks. And a bit of clever DNS management allows things like coral and akamai to do distributed web content delivery.

And if you let search engines serve as your source for finding the location of resources you need, how is that better than DNS? It seems to me that you're just swapping one directory service for another, the second being corporately owned and changeable at their whim.

They're open to competition and they're a matter of individual choice. Don't like Google's results? Use Yahoo!'s or Teoma's or any of the hundreds that would spring up in response. Of course, you're swapping one directory service for another. That was the GP's point. DNS, while useful, is not the sine qua non of the Internet. DNS relates human concepts (domain names) to IP addresses. Search engines relate human concepts (text content) to IP addresses. My Bookmarks relate human concepts (whatever mnemonic I choose) to IP addresses. It's all the same function. If DNS got borked, the 'Net would recover with surprising speed. That's why any threat regarding "control" of the Internet is empty. Any problems would be temporary--a hassle, yes, but a short-term hassle.

Personally, I think it's pretty scary that one country that, frankly, the world doesn't find very trustworthy right now, controls it.

s/country/organization/ and the statement works equally well for the UN. As a regulatory body, the UN is a proven failure. It works as a venue for mediation and it works as a coordinator for disaster relief. That's about it.

I'm *not* American, but my bullshit detectors go off hard when I see China and Saudi Arabia slavering for control of the free-est communication network known to man. And it's sad to see elements in the EU joining with these countries to promote their own bureaucratic agenda (and many Europeans have noticed [blogspot.com]).

And the ironic bit is that Tunisia, where this free-the-DNS-from-US-shackles gabfest was held, has an extremely lousy record [nettime.org] on Net freedom.

No, I think you're wrong there. The US DoC has control. ICANN is simply their agent for exercising that control. ICANN cannot do anything to "." without permission of the DoC. See here [biglist.com] for a better explanation than I could ever give.

Beside for finding a server IP dns names can be usefull for a lot of stuffs :

- providing load balancing.By the fact they can point to different IP each time.You can have a single domain name like "wikipedia.org" or "google.*" or "pool.ntp.org" pointing to numerous servers accross the globe and thus distibute the load.Old way (providing a list of mirrors) requires the server the contains the mirror list to be able to sustain connextion from ALL users. And adds a cumbersome step to the process.

- server co-sharing.A server is usually referred by a single IP addresse.Assigning multiple name to the same server enables you to have different websites depending on used servername.Most of the cheap server solution uses this....of course if one day the IPv6 rolls in, it'll be easier to have multiple IPs assigned to a single server (one for each website).

- dynamic IPdynip.org and such. (see problems with load-balancing vs. on-line lists above)..of course with IPv6 this may become less a problem.

- DNS used for everything else, including kitchen sink.DNS are also used for listing Spammers,listing botnets and other black-lists,listing E164 number to VoIP maps,what ever else.DNS are often used as convenient lists, with standart interface.

DNS makes the Internet easy to use. How many external IP addresses can you recite from memory? When we moveto IPV6 addresses, will you remember an address like "2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334/64"?

Google DOES make use of DNS names-- it's in the search result. If you rely too much on Google to browse the web, you are giving up some control to rely on a centralized power. I'd be willing to bet that all of your bookmarks use DNS names as well.

In the time before DNS, people STILL didn't want to remember all those long IP addresses, and usually stored a name/IP map as a host file on the local machine. And there was much confusion when the host files fell out of sync, and thus a centralized name service was created to deal with this confusion.

A hypothetical situation : Your neighbor is a drunken, violent man who you regularly overhear beating his wife and children in a most extreme fashion. They are regularly covered in bruises, and you suspect the man may even be raping his own daughters. The police are contacted, but the man is in business with the police chief and mayor and corruption has made them unwilling to prevent any of this. You are the biggest man on the block, and could easily prevent the man from harming his family any further w

Do you have a moral duty to stop him? If you choose not to prevent his actions despite your ability to do so, does it mean you are partially responsible for the continued abuse?

This is the fundamental problem of dilemas, and free will. Are we morally obligated to protect his family? It's certainly not our job to do so. There's certainly no responsibilities that we have that might carry innately to protect them, beyond that we're human, and they're human, and we're aware of their plight. I see you're not arguing that it might be the responsibility of some person half way across the world to stop him. I'm sure you could certainly find someone in the world, who would be much better suited to the task of stopping this guy than yourself. Why would they not be responsible?

For that matter, what does being the largest person on the block have to do with being morally bound to stop him? Because you can? So, you're only responsible if you're aware of it and you are physically able to stop it? Couldn't one argue that no matter what your capability to stop him, it's your moral responsibility to try your best to stop him?

Bringing God into this just for a sec (as a piece of argument, you don't have to believe in him, you just have to accept that some people believe him to exist, and this question matter is important for them), since God is surely able to stop this (omnipotent) and he's surely aware of it (omniscencient) wouldn't that make it his moral duty to stop it?

You've already said: "The police are contacted, but the man is in business with the police chief and mayor and corruption has made them unwilling to prevent any of this." So, it's obvious to say that there are a number of people who have a moral duty to stop this, but already are not. So at issue here is not just the man beating his wife and kids, but also that the whole system is permitting this behavior and you consider it wrong, and you want to take action.

Now, say you're the Simpsons living next door to the Flanders. Your kid Bart is a horrible brat. Not only that, but you're a lazy bum, and just about everyone in your family has their problems. If you were the Flanders, is it your moral duty to rescue the kids from this situation, and give them a better life? You certainly could. Now, if you were the Simpsons, do you want them butting in on your business?

One may draw the line of moral responsibility to react only when they're breaking the law, but you have to understand that everyone will respond the same way, "this is my business not yours" no matter if it's a legal issue or not. That family-beater is going to tell you to mind your own damn busieness, you can be sure of that.

Fundamentally, it is not the responsibility of the individual to enforce the laws of their nation, state, county, and city, or other such divisions as they may exist. If the police department and the city government is not doing its job, then you let the next level up know, until someone does something to clean up that corruption, and save that family. You have no right to walk over and beat the shit out of that man, even if he is beating his family. But hey, free will, you can choose to ignore that you don't have a right to do it, and just go and beat his ass anyway, and teach him a lesson. Just expect consequences as a result of it. Is saving that family worth you going to jail for assault? Especially when it's not guarenteed that you'll save them permanently?

Rosa Parks knew she was going to get in trouble, and get arrested when she did what she did. She wasn't some clueless idiot who was just tired and didn't want to move back. Just because you believe that you are morally justified does not mean that you'll escape consequences for doing something. Most people into civil disobedience seem to forget this.

Anyways, I'm obviously ranting on a range of topics here. My answer: You're morally responsible for that family only if you feel or believe that you're morally responsible. You're also only at fault for allowing it to continue, if you feel or believe that you are responsible to stop it. No one else can dictate this moral duty upon you.

If other countries don't want to play in our sandbox, let them create their own version of the net.

I keep hearing this, and I still have no idea what it means. Some of the protocols used on the Internet originated in the USA, some did not. Does that matter? Many of the implementations didn't. If you're using Linux then you may well be using a TCP/IP stack that originated a few hundred yards from me. I guess this means that people from outside Sketty, Swansea, don't deserve to connect to any servers running Linux.

The USA did not lay the cable that comes to my house. They did not lay any of the cable in the UK.

We did create our own version of the 'net. So did the French. And the Germans, and the Chinese and many, many other nations. And we joined them all together to create an internetwork.

The USA did not create the Internet. The USA created the first segments of the Internet. Since then, everyone has been creating the Internet. Everyone will continue to create the Internet whatever the USA does, but I hope the USA will choose to remain a part of it.

Sell IP addresses much like domain names are sold now. Does this require a major shift in how we operate? Well...sortof. It is more a state of mind than of hardware; most routers allow you to define your IP address manually, but most ISPs aren't set up to handle anything that isn't a subset of their own IP address range.

Right. Care to share your wonderful routing algorithm that will allow you to insert a random IP into the middle of a network?
There is a reason why IPs are in blocks and each ISP is as

Yes, for the same reason I want criminals to be able to vote. Every nation should be represented in a fair and democratic Internet administration, not just the people we like.

Well actually, no, for the same reason many criminals have certain freedoms taken away from them. The internet is the greatest vehicle for free speech and exchange of ideas ever invented. I find it horrifying that you think that EVERY nation should have a democractic say in the administration of the internet -- including countries that already, today, censor the internet for the 'good of their citizens'. I wonder, what other mechanisms of control would you like to see bestowed upon these other nations?

And therein lies the problem. If other nations do set up their own root servers, the Internet will be fractured and cease to be the useful network it is today. The whole point of the Internet is that it's run by rough consensus. You can't deny other nations a voice and still expect them to participate on your terms, it's an international resource that only has the value it has because it is singular.

Fractured but if there is a need for interaction it will happen. The internet is already a sparse network of sub-networks. If there's a will there's a way.

The Internet as it is today is controlled, you just turn a blind eye because you are the ones controlling it.

Oh? Care to give an example of how the way its being controlled/managed limits your freedom of speech and expression? Or by "control" are you talking about the fact that it's being managed by a group who make logistical decisions that I could care less about (like whether.xxx or.goatsex should be added as a TLD).

I find it horrifying that you think that EVERY nation should have a democractic say in the administration of the internet -- including countries that already, today, censor the internet for the 'good of their citizens'.

What's the matter with letting China et al have a say, anyway? You seem to be equating "can voice an opinion and has a vote in how things are run" with "can take control whenever they want". That's ludicrous.

Or by "control" are you talking about the fact that it's being managed by a group who make logistical decisions that I could care less about

Why on earth should what you care about be a factor in this?

And it's couldn't care less. You sound like a fucking idiot when you get it wrong.

I find it horrifying that you think that EVERY nation should have a democractic say in the administration of the internet -- including countries that already, today, censor the internet for the 'good of their citizens'. I wonder, what other mechanisms of control would you like to see bestowed upon these other nations?

I find it horrifying that you think that EVERY person should have a democractic say including people that are black, jewish, or women, or too poor to own land. Those kinds of people voting might result in blacks owning local businesses and women being able to wickedly seduce men without a husband or father to stop them. Poor people could pass laws that provide a minimum wage, thus hurting the economy for their own selfish interests. I wonder, what other mechanisms of control would you like to see bestowed upon these other types of people; education, the right to ride in the front of buses, the right to marry white women?

There is great danger and injustice in assuming that your beliefs are 100% correct and better than everyone else's. Democracy is all about taking everyone's opinion into account. Any country that relies upon the U.S. to always remain a benevolent dictator of the internet and protect their freedoms for them is a country of fools. Right now a power grab in the U.S. could result in the internet resolving to religious messages instead of proper resolution in muslim countries around the world. Even if the U.S. is a good defender of free speech now, that is not a reason to trust it implicitly in the future, instead the system should be made robust and redundant with control shared by many nations. Democracy is not a cure-all, but it is better than trusting a dictatorship of one nation.

Do you really want Iran, North Korea and China having a say in how DNS is administered?

Yes, for the same reason I want criminals to be able to vote. Every nation should be represented in a fair and democratic Internet administration, not just the people we like.

That's a nice sentiment, but the analogy doesn't hold. If you want criminals to be able to vote, you count their votes. If you want North Korea to have a say in how the internet is administered, it's impossible. You can give Dear Leader a say in Internet administration, but you can't make him share that authority with the rest of the country. Letting totalitarian governments "represent" the populations they control would make international representation less democratic, not more.

If you want North Korea to have a say in how the internet is administered, it's impossible. You can give Dear Leader a say in Internet administration, but you can't make him share that authority with the rest of the country. Letting totalitarian governments "represent" the populations they control would make international representation less democratic, not more.

This doesn't stop the US negotiating and signing treaties with such governments, or if it does, then they won't be part of the UN. If the rest of the world has normal diplomatic relations with that government, we accept it as representative of that country, and should count their vote on world affairs as much as that of any other country. If there's an illegitimate government somewhere, they don't get a place in the UN.

You want criminals to be able to vote? Let me guess...you're a convicted felon aren't you?

No. Believe it or not, a person can be concerned for the rights of a certain class of person without actually being a member of that class themselves. Your projection that I must have this concern out of self interest gives away a rather self-centred attitude.

Career criminals and those guilty of especially heinous crimes on the other hand most definitely should be excluded.

Let's take an example. A person has strong convictions that people should have the right to determine what goes into their own bodies, and embarks upon a career selling skunk. During this career, they get convicted several times. Does this mean they should be barred from voting for representatives that would decriminalise marijuana?

Or another example. A doctor believes that a person should have the right to avoid the suffering of a protracted terminal illness by means of suicide, so he assists a cancer-ridden old lady to end her life. There's no shortage of people in the USA who would label him a monster and call it an "especially heinous crime". Does this mean that he should not be allowed to vote for a representative that would permit assisted suicide for terminally ill patients?

Now in both of these cases, you might argue that their crimes weren't so bad. But I assure you, there are millions who would demonise them. Does this mean that their participation in the democratic process should not be allowed? Should anybody have the right to tell another that they may not participate in the democratic process?

Not only that, but democracy is based upon individuals, not governments.

Well in that case, the USA doesn't qualify, as individuals do not elect your president; states do.

The US isn't perfect, but our track record when it comes to human rights is second to none.

And you have the audacity to call me naive? Open your eyes. Your government refuses to apply the Geneva conventions to their prisoners. Your government turns a blind eye to prison rape to such an extent that it's become a running joke. Your government is one of only two out of hundreds that hasn't signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child that forbids executing minors. Your government is openly debating if it's okay if they torture people - as if the question even needs to be asked!

The only reason why the UN is wanting control of the internet is because the UN is comprised of criminal regimes whose power is being threatened by the freedom that the internet represents.

You do realise that the USA was one of the founding members of the United Nations, don't you? That it was an American president that named it?

This talk of putting the UN in charge didn't start up until after governments like China's started taking steps to censor what their people had access to online.

Actually, it came right after the USA reneged on it's word about how long ICANN could keep hold of.net, after it pressured ICANN to not approve the.xxx TLD, after ICANN imposed a tax on new domains (does "taxation without representation" ring a bell?), and while the registrars of the world said "Registrars consider there to be a breach of trust by the ICANN Board and the ICANN staff in approving a contract with Verisign regarding.net that contains significant changes from the draft.net agreement posted on the ICANN website, without public consultation.".

The push to move control of the DNS hierarchy to the UN has been largely from the EU, not China. So sorry, your allegations that it's all China's doing are without merit.

We can't stop other countries from setting up their own root servers if they want to, except militarily. Are we really going to go to war to stop them (sadly, in this administration, this is not quite a rhetorical question)?

I heard the debate on radio, and I assume the only reason you think that is that you agree with Hitchins' perspective. Galloway is a strange character, and you may or may not agree with him, but he's a ferocious debater. Hitchins never had a chance - he did well even to land a few hits.

I saw the same debate, and it was not one sided bitch slapping.Neither opponent had a point and they both spent most of theirtime insulting the other. Who you percieve as victor says moreabout you than them.

I would call that a comprehensive misunderstanding of the debate. I agree far more with Hitchens than with Galloway, but Galloway won the debate hands down. It wasn't even close, nor could it ever have been. Hitchens is a different kind of person than Galloway and Galloway has decades of experience of thinking and debating on his feet. Had they done a debate-by-newspaper-column, the outcome might well have been different.

The US wants to keep control for purely financial reasons. They want to gouge other countries for access, and allow the big telecoms to maintain their control on the flow of information at asinine prices.

Or, they want to keep control for moral reasons. Remember, Alberto "Gonzo" Gonzales has started his Porn Squad (not to attack only kiddie porn sites, but consenting adult sites as well) in some sort of twisted moral crusade. Well, there is a buttload of porn on the net, isn't there. If we keep control, he can stamp it out...

Another reason could be "National Security," though I'm pretty sure they already spend an asinine amount of money to keep sensitive stuff off of the 'Net to begin with. The Internet is no longer a super-secret Pentagon project, and has been publicly available for over a decade. I remember reading somewhere that works of the Government are in the Public Domain. Dunno if that applys to just images and text, or to secret, non-military projects like the Internet (again, now that it's been made public, not prior).

I say we share control with the world at large. Except with the French. The French are too weird. And most certainly not with the UN, corrupt an organisation as that is. It should be a seperate, international consortium with equal power for all countries involved. There shouldn't be one "regulator," and especially not the United States.

That's fud and simply untrue, no matter how many times people repeat it.

What is happening is that several countries (not the UN) don't want to live with a situation anymore in which only one nation, the US, controls critical parts of their infrastructure. I don't know why such a sentiment should come as a surprise to anybody, I think it's pretty normal and inevitable.

And in case this comes up again:It's not the EU pushing this, as/. falsely reported, but on the contrary the EU is right now trying to find a solution that both sides, the US, that doesn't want to give up control and other nations, the don't want the control in the hands of the US, could live with.

Finally, I'm sure we will be treated to about 100 posts whining about how the US invented the internet and the world was so unfair. This is of course utterly laughable, as it simply does not matter who invented what, or how would you react to the Chinese demanding you stop using paper, or, omg, firearms, because they invented the stuff?But if you want to play this little game anyway, please keep in mind that the world wide web, or rather the technologies necessary for it, were invented in Europe.

Actually, countries like China and Syria have mad it quite clear that their goals are to restructure the internet such that it is easier to track users, servers can be licenced and tracked, internet services can be taxed, it is easier to block sites, etc.

The whole "They just want to control a critical part of their infrastructure" arguement doesn't come from China, Syria, North Korea, or Cuba, it comes from apologists in the West in order to justify what is clearly an attemt to destroy the free internet as it operates now.

It would be extremly easy to implement a system where no one entity controls the internet (have each country be responsible for there own.uk.us. country extension, and with IP6 to give each country a huge block of IPs it controls). It would solve the problem of the U.S. "control" of the internet, and wouldn't require giving massive power to the U.N., and technologically wouldn't be that different than what exists now.

This has nothing to do with countries worried about U.S. control of critical parts of their infrastructure (because all those countries have 100% control of their own infrastructure right now!), this is about wanting to end the era of the free, wild, and completly unregulated internet. It is about making the internet an easily controlable medium, like television, radio, and telephone. It is embarrasing for Western politicians to admit that their views on censorship, taxation, and internal survalence of their population is virtually identical to that of China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. So you spread some FUD about the U.S. being in control of their critical infrastructure (which it isn't, and even if it was the problem could be solved without the U.N.), and hope that knee jerk anti-Americanism will blind people to the real authoritarian goal.

Protocols maybe, but the US did NOT give 'the Internet' away for free to other countries. On the contrary, other countries have all paid huge amounts of money to install their own network infrastructure in their own countries (and in fact the US charges money for connecting to the US's portions of the Internet - it's a purely for profit enterprise not a charity). I'm sorry, but if I paid to create a network, I damn well have the right to say how it's run and who controls it. Same goes for any country.

In fairness (to the US) the whole thing's a mess: the EU uses eu.int, the UN uses un.org, the UK uses.gov.uk. Outside politics, it's much the same: the US and Australia, say, use "edu" for schools and universities; the UK and New Zealand use "ac".

the dmca also PROTECTS consumers... by limiting our access to our data and our devices.
the clear skies initiative PROTECTS the environment... by making government inspections into private self-inspections.
the no child left behind PROTECTS our children... by creating a hole in the education budget with an unfunded mandate.
the patriot act PROTECTS our precious freedom... by ripping holes in the constitution.
operation iraqi freedom PROTECTS iraqis... by bombing them.
Why is it that whenever I hear the 'pubs talk about PROTECTING something, I start to worry about whatever it is they want to PROTECT?
Perhaps PROTECT is actually some kind of acronym equivalent to "Drop your pants and grab your ankles."
The Orwellian-ness of it all is excitingly terrifying. But, yes, by all means, let's PROTECT the internet.
Is anyone thinking that maybe the gov't will start PROTECTING us from the terrorist content on the internet, the same way China does for their citizens?

The USA seems to be becoming more and more totalitarian in the way it handles things in general. I realise this is less evident for those actually in the USA (the same way most Chinese are oblivious to the same type of government) but for all of us outsiders, your government is increasingly hostile and arrogant, even towards those it deems friends.

What we don't need is the DNS root servers being almost all controlled by this one country. Things could go seriously bad in a shockingly small space of time, and before you know it a key part of the Internet we all rely on is subject to the every whim of a crazy man (not necessarily G W Bush). And considering the Internet is now critical to many industries and governments, any kind of manipulation will be a very bad thing.

Now I'm not saying the UN should take control of this, but why can't we have a collection of countries known for their relatively free nature be in charge of this? USA could take a few servers (with it being so big), Canada could have one, UK have a few (because I'm British and biased), scatter some around France, Germany, maybe even Russia (*gasp*).

Why does this need to be a UN issue? Surely these countries could have come to an agreement with the US.

Although the best course of action would be for the major world players to set up their own root servers, provide incentives for ISPs to use those primarily. I don't know if the root servers have the main configuration files available publicly, but surely there wouldn't be an issue of syncing them to non-US root servers? After all it only benefits everyone, and if the US does turn into a total bastard (pardon my French) at least everything won't crumble and we'd still have unbiased root servers scattered about.

What we don't need is the DNS root servers being almost all controlled by this one country. Things could go seriously bad in a shockingly small space of time, and before you know it a key part of the Internet we all rely on is subject to the every whim of a crazy man (not necessarily G W Bush). And considering the Internet is now critical to many industries and governments, any kind of manipulation will be a very bad thing.

Now I'm not saying the UN should take control of this, but why can't we have a collection of countries known for their relatively free nature be in charge of this? USA could take a few servers (with it being so big), Canada could have one, UK have a few (because I'm British and biased), scatter some around France, Germany, maybe even Russia (*gasp*).

Not all the root servers are in US. And while a US agency is "determining" which ones are official, they do not even own them, private businesses do.

The funny part about this is the worst things that can happen if US manages to shut off DNS, is a DNS root split, which is exactly what all the countries are threatening to do if US does not cooperate.

So the worst thing US can do is exactly what they are about to do to themselves.

As that does not make sense, I am going to make a comment that this has nothing to do with infrastructure or security of the net. All that this issue is about is either input into decisions....aka some countries may not appreciate having a.xxx domain, etc. Or money, aka some countries want to use DNS servers to make people make payments to them.

"...we risk the freedom and enterprise fostered by this informational marvel and end up sacrificing access to information, privacy and protection of intellectual property we have all depended on." he said in a statement."

He wants the US to be 'the boss' of the internet, just like, for some reason, the US needs to be the boss of everything in order for it to be 'free', 'democratic', 'safe' etc.

The Project For A New American Century is an organization dedicated "...to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests." Among the members are VP Dick Cheney and his currently embattled Chief of Staff Lewis Libby, SecDef Don Rumsfled, Jeb Bush (brother of President Bush), etc. See their Statement of Principals and a list of the signers of this founding document. [newamericancentury.org] If you don't recognize some of the names, Google them and see where they have worked in the last five years. Paul Wolfowits, Dov Zakheim and Zalmay Khalilzad are good ones to start with. Here's a nice place to start with Zakheim. [google.com] And it only gets more interesting from there;)

In September, 2000 PNAC released a controversial document entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses, [newamericancentury.org] in which they argued that a "catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor" was needed to speed up their planned re-militarization of America (see pg. 68). Earlier in this document they itemized their core principals, including 'CONTROL THE NEW "INTERNATIONAL COMMONS" OF SPACE AND "CYBERSPACE," and pave the way for the creation of a new military service - U.S. Space Forces - with the mission of space control.'(see pg. 11) On page 57 they go into more detail about how and why America must retain control of cyberspace. Controlling ICAAN is critical to this goal.

Scared yet? Remember, these are the folks that brought us the Patriot Act, forcing a vote on it after 9/11 without allowing anyone to read it, and enabling such great things as holding potential "terrorists" indefinitely without access to family or legal representation, sneak-and-peek searches, warrantless monitoring of e-mail, monitoring dissent groups without any suspicion of criminal activity by them, etc., etc.

As for Iraq, PNAC has been calling for the overthrow of Saddam since 1997 [newamericancentury.org] as a way to retain control of world energy supplies, critical to ensuring America's control over the world. But I think they bit off more than they could chew over there.

This group is truly scary, and they have been running our government for five years now.

Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota, said his nonbinding resolution would protect the Internet from a takeover by the United Nations that's scheduled to be discussed at a summit in Tunisia next month.

Yeah, because passing laws in the U.S. is a great way to control what other countries do, in their own countries, with their own hardware and networks that they built and paid for. Brilliant! This is just another politician trying to capitalize on the "us versus them" sentiments trying to be pushed by a number of factions in the U.S.

There is no reason why any one country should run a single point of failure for a resource vital to communications and commerce throughout the world, especially when most of the gear it is running on, paid for by, and resides in those other countries. The world has spoken, they want a democratic solution with representation for everyone. They don't want to keep paying large fees to U.S. corporations for a naming service that was free before the big corporations got involved and can be free, or nearly free again. Most of all, they don't like an increasingly aggressive and deceptive country to be able to severely damage the economy of another country at their whim. No one trusts the U.S. to be a benevolent dictator and they would be foolish if they did. It is time to remember some of those American ideals, like democracy and representation for all are far more important than the new American ideals of making money and bullying the rest of the world.

To put it simply, the internet is a global enterprise made up of hardware and software running in and paid for countries all around the world. Those countries deserve a say in how the naming scheme works and this sort of "America is superior to the rest of the world" nationalist bullshit is not only useless chest thumping, but it makes the U.S. look like even more of a vicious bully in the eyes of the world. You should be ashamed of yourself Mr. Coleman.

So, I'm probably too late for anyone to notice, but I'll post anyways.

It is completely unnecessary for a change of hands or the root servers to take place. The mechanisms are already there for any country to effectively free itself from the evil grasp of the U.S. At least this is true if the motivating factor truly is a fear of the U.S. crippling other economies by use of it's control of DNS servers.

Any country could simply keep up daily clones of the root servers. They could then legislate that ISPs and Universities use these clones exclusively. The clones could even directly reference the actual rootservers until such a time as access to those root servers is denied, at which point it could failover to it's own database.

This prevents the scenario where the U.S. messes with your country by breaking the rootservers. If we decided to split you at least have a relatively up to date domain name service structure and you go from there.

Every time the subject comes to the front-page, the thread is aflame with uninformed, knee-jerk, and often plain stupid posts.

Half of the people posting here don't even have a basic grasp of how the internet works.And, no, the internet is not the US. Sever the international links, and then you'll have a US-owned internet. Oh boy, you've lost access to the pirate bay. Hey, you can't get some crypto packages anymore! Please. That's the whole point of the internet.

If the world starts using different root-servers, that's it. They'll talk to the US-only roots to maintain connectivity, and the Us-only roots will talk to the new roots for the very same reason. And if they don't, why, just add them to your own setup.There. No one was harmed.Sharing the IP-space will be a bit harder; but that would be a good excuse to move to ipv6 faster.

But short of invading the world, there's little the US can do about it.

I can't see what the fuss is about. Really. Get on with your lack of life.

Please read through the political smoke-and-mirrors.The aforementioned senator is doing a classic political deceit maneuvre: "if it's not us, it's the non-human enemy monsters!"

It's not that simple. The proposal they really want to combat is meant to give control over the Internet to a commitee of pretty much all countries in the world. It's not like all of a sudden dictatorships such as China will get ultimate power on-line: they will simply be members like anyone else in the commitee.What the senator really despises is that the control over the Internet will cease to be a 100% american affair and become worldwide instead.

Yes, it would suck if China will get control over the Internet. Fortunately, it's not gonna happen either way.

So what to stop the U.N. from using the internet as a way to control other countries?

Lets swap the N with an S there, and maybe you might see the problem that other countries have.

The role the US plays isn't anything a court cannot fix if the powers are ever abused.

Whose courts? And why should US courts have any say over what happens in other nations?

What would the main benefit of letting the UN or EU control it over the US?

Here's whats really going on. The US probably, as a part of trade talks or talks over military matters, mentioned to various groups, including the EU (forget the UN, thats an arena, not an entity, its like blaming the whitehouse lawn for the actions of Bush), that their internet is looking mighty fragile, and whoops, wouldn't it be a shame if someone accidentally knocked it over, as a leverage tool. So, after going away and pondering their options, aforementioned governments tell the US to go hump a pineapple, and set up their own redundant system. That they are doing it publicly (no need to) should tell any observer all they need to know about what's really going on.

Don't think you get to see every power struggle displayed on the evening news. 99% of what counts is never seen, but may be readily deduced.

And the web was created by an Englishman paid for by EU grants. So we own the web and you'll have to give it back. Also, we own Boolean logic, if we take that back then the USA has to go back to early-19th century technology - so you'd better be nice or your internet will just disappear altogether.

BTW, the Arabs "own" enough of math to send us all back to dark ages - we'd better be nice to them from now on I think.

The Web was invented in Switzerland by a Belgian with a French name and a Londoner. Uninstall your browser and go back using Gopher and Archie.

Gunpowder was invented in China long ago and intended for recreational purpose only. The inventor could never envision its usage for anything else than making children happy, and uncivilised westerners use it today to maim them. Please return your firearms to the PRC. Do keep Charlton Heston.

Ships were invented in Greece to find a golden fleece. They were to be a means of transport and exploration, not military platforms. Please return the Nimitz to Athens.

The Latin alphabet was supposed to be used for Latin and derived languages exclusively. It was developed by legitimate scribes with Etrurian sublicenses, and never intended to be used by barbarians that cannot even write. ("write", for example, should be spelt "VRAJT"). Please send all your keyboards and typewriters back to Italy.

Bread was invended in Egypt as a tasty way of eating flour. It was never meant to be used in (bleargh) Big Macs. Send all your McDonalds to Cairo (though they will probably answer "thanks, but... let's just say like we took them, right?")

The Statue of Liberty was built in France to honour the values of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity, together with friendship between France and the US. It was not meant to symbolise a nation that claims to have saved France in the world wars (in the first the US entered only for one year, in the second they did not enter until attacked), calling the French "surrendering cheese-eating monkeys" (the "eating" remark, coming from an American, is really offensive) while never had a military occupation on their soil since the Brits left, and screwed all the statue was meant to represent by invading a defenseless country with bunches of black sticky liquid, and installing their puppet regime like Hapsburg Austria used to (ok, no sticky liquids back then). Unmount and shove it in a place the French will be all too happy to illustrate.

Cars were invented in Germany to visit the countryside in the weekend, not to be a penis supersizer. Please transfer of GM and Ford motor companies to Mannheim. Not sure whether they want the Humvees. Bikes go to Karlsruhe.

Circumcision was invented by people who had little water and lived in the desert. It was not meant as a way to prevent masturbation, and whoever thought for a second to cut a baby's willy because he might do "dirty things" with it in 15 years' time was a complete psycho. The idea was hygiene! Return to Israel your... oh never mind.

WTF does any of this have to do with the "day to day operations of the net?" The day to day operations of the net are accomplished by obscure engineers toiling in relative anonymity at ISP's all across the globe. This is about editorial control (not even technical control) of the "." DNS zone file, and nothing more. This is such a non-issue technically and for the future "evolution" of the Internet that it's laughable watching all the anti-American slashbots get worked into a lather over it.

Basically what this boils down to is who gets to say what new TLDs (like.com,.net, etc.) will be created. Right now it is ICANN under contract with the Department of Commerce. Some think it should be the UN. Honestly, I really don't know why. It's a minor thing that has nothing to do with actually controlling anything. If you don't like the US DoC controlling your root (and remember it's just the file, not the servers themselves), you already have alternatives [wikipedia.org].

It's certainly not the life or death struggle over DNS (OMG! China will censor my blog!) that people have been portraying it, as the ccTLD's and gTLD's will continue to be run entirely by their appropriate registrars.

There is one other big issue than the creation of say, the.xxx gTLD - and that's directions to the ccTLD's. Currently, the US department of commerce can tell ICANN who gets to host ccTLD's. So any country's entire DNS system - for example, the.iq domain for iraq - can be arbitrarily turned off or assigned to a new registrar. And there's nothing that country can do about it. Haiti had to wait 2 years to get its domain assigned to the registrar of its choice, for example.

That's what this big argument is really about - why should the US government, or a fairly unaccountable company like ICANN have the right to determine which registrar, if any, gets to run a country's DNS? So far the US government hasn't abused this power *that* much - but it could.

Nor is ICANN entirely trusted either - remember the fiasco when verisign decided to start domain squatting with it's search engine on all unassigned.com and.net domains, and ICANN did virtually nothing about it?

The problem with the alternative roots is that software makers like microsoft only support the 'official' ICANN system out of the box. With very few people technicially capable of adding alternative roots, and even fewer knowing why they'd need or want to, ICANN and the DoC effective has the rest of the world over a barrel. And they want to get off it.

Consider first that France demanded that eBay remove auctions of historical WWII Nazi items from their site.

Consider next that Germany outlawed Wolfenstein 3D because it contained various symbols of the WWII Nazi regime, despite the game hardly being sympathetic to the Nazis.

If there's a country that stands for defending freedom of speech, it sure isn't either of them. Perish the day when we can't even register domain names like "naziscansuckmyballs.com" because Europe is too afraid to deal with the realities of its own history.

As for the nazi stuff, maybe it's not good to celebrate a regime that murdered millions. And keep in mind that stuff is LOCAL. As in, you can sell the game, just not there. So really your point has no bearing on the general theme of running the the internet.

Oh, and how was that censored? It got its rating upped to AO, which caused stores to voluntarily drop it until the content was removed, and Rockstar to voluntarily remove the content that upped its rating. It is in no way, shape, or form government sponsored censorship. Period.

The ESRB is a board set up by the game industry itself. It is self-policing. The government has no involvement in it, besides a couple of states (not national government), passing some laws that merely enforce the ratings at the retail level (where in most states it is voluntary).

And banning children from certain innapropriate content, while consenting adults can freely play that content (and companies can freely publish that content) hardly constitutes censorship. That would be like saying that laws stating a 14 year old cant have sex with a 30 year old violate the 14 year old's rights (whereas most developed countries have statutory rape laws, and consider them a good thing).

> The ESRB is a board set up by the game industry itself. It is self-policing. The government has no involvement in it

First off, the content industry learned long ago if they don't self-police then the government will step in and police them. This is why you have stuff like the Comics Code Authority, TV ratings, warning stickers on music, etc.

Now these ratings systems are used and abused by retailers. Many stores simply wont sell games rated violent to people under 18 for the very same fear. Other companies abuse this leverage. For instance Walmart sells so many magazines, it can dictate content such as what goes on the cover. Many publishers submit their covers to Walmart first to make sure the Walmart moralists are happy with it. Not to mention editing of tracks on music.

So, its really disingenious to say that the US lacks censorship because its not done by the government per se. Also, I would like to remind some of the posters here that the FCC does censor content over public airwaves, usually to the wishes of religious moralists. Also state and municipal governments pull books from libraries all the time due to trivial complaints and lately some states have been working hard to erase other "threatening" ideas like biological evolution.

The European criticism is a strong one, but like someone said all censorship is local. These are the countries that are still healing from the horrors of WWII, which to me is a much more compelling reason to limit access to something than the American "Jesus told me he doesn't like it" culture-war bullshit reasons. Also, I'd like to mention that finding a copy of Mein Kampf isn't hard to do in Europe, but libraries in my own town have pulled books for "homosexual" or "anti-family" content.

Also, the US is no more pro-speech on the internet than any other country and all the bills that barely failed to pass as laws to censor the crap out of the internet should give Americans pause about censorship. I don't care if the Germans are "worse," it shouldnt be happening period. Now toss in Utah's big porn control law which is still in effect and you've obviously got real unresolved censorship issues.

Videogames are still new media and the "We'll censor ourselves" approach has worked pretty well, but its still a hot-button issue and people like Jack Thompson and his millions of followers (or at least people who agree with him) are a strong influence in American culture and possibly law. Expect further tightening of "self-censoring" and retailers refusing to sell to minors for more trivial reasons.

It was, however, shipped on the game disk. To use a ridiculous example to put it in perspective, what if kiddie porn was put into a game, locked out, and then shipped around with a E rating? What if this could be unlocked very easily with a game cheat device (I recall the PS2 versions could unlock it with a game cheat device, correct me if I am wrong)? Its not a simple black and white line of "its in the game" or "its not in the game." It was shipped with the game, and very easily unlocked, sort of a gray area.

As far as the fuss over sex... please. There has been a lot of fuss over GTA since it was launched. The sex was just more ammo to continue firing the volleys. You make it sound like everyone was ok with the game until sex was put in, which is blatently untrue. And even then, more people were upset with the fact that it seemed that Rockstar hid this content, and misled the ESRB. Not entirely accurate, but that was the perception.

To say that modders added the content (instead of unlocking it) and everyone got upset about it only because it was sex is a strawman, and blatantly incorrect.

Technically, GTA San Andreas has yet to be censored at all. It's still for sale. The issue was that it was rated improperly by the (volunteer) ratings board, and it had to be re-rated before it could hit store shelves again. No censorship there.

This is so ignorant, I don't know what part of your "arguments" I should cripple first, but I'll try.
1. Yeah France did that, so what? There are items that cannot be sold on the US Market either. If the US are too afraid that anyone can buy detailed maps of their country online they ban them as well because they are scared of terrorists. Besides - eBay is not exactly the place where i'd measure a country's free speech policies.
2. Yeah Germany banned Wolfenstein from sale in stores - which made it ever more interesting for locals. It's true that it's stupid, but fact is, that showing the swastika symbol in public has been outlawed since the second world war. And nobody here in Germany who has half a brain resents that law. We have seen enough of these symbols for some generations to come. If you care for free speech, fine: In Germany you are allowed to posess and show Swastikas in your Home anywhere you like. You can even knit yourself a blanket with swatikas and wear swastika underwear, when you go to the elections and vote the National socialist party. Former party is not outlawed here simply because of the fact, that WE HAVE FREE SPEECH HERE. It is a small minority party nevertheless.
3. As for the Europeans being "too afraid to deal with the realities of its own history" - this demonstrates about the most disturbing lack of intelligence I have come across in a million slashdot comments.
Admittedly, Europe, especially Germany, has a troubled past - that much is true. But do you have any idea how much effort, education, institutionalization and last but not least money is invested to "deal with the realities" ??? I assume that you don't. Every European (at least west europeans that is) who has ever stuck his nose into a school has gotten a real good tasteful of europes past wars. Our cities are plastered with monuments (big ones, like the Stelen right next to the Reichstag in Berlin and small ones, embedded into the sidewalks, bearing the names of jewish victims of the 3rd reich) to remind us what happened every day. And now you come along and tell us that we are afraid to deal with all that??? Think again dude.
Whew....what a post, you really got me going there.

Thanks for all that FUD. The way I see it, countries should be able to control their own domains. The U.S. will keep the null domain (i.e. no country suffix), but domain names in the.uk area will be controlled by an organization appointed by the UK government,.cn by the Chinese government, etc. and all countries should agree to propagate the changes.

Countries control the domains in their national TLD. When you try to get a domain in national TLD, the query first goes to the root DNS servers, which redirect it to the national TLD DNS servers. These national servers are run and controlled by the government of the country in question.

This controversy is about who controls the root servers. However, i think it's absurd. Nothing stops UN, national governments, or Joe Average from setting up new root servers, but you'd need to convince others to use those servers, and that is unlikely to be possible in anywhere but the worst of dictatorships. US has no control over DNS, beyond that everyone voluntarily agree that the US-run root servers are authoritative. This is authority by respect, and it is impossible to give away, even if US wanted to.

Given all this, could we please stop posting stories about this idiocy, it reminds me too much about that incident of a political entity trying to forbid the dangerous substance dihydromonoxide, AKA water.

I can agree entirely that what is obscene to me is porn to the next guy, but there must be a line somewhere. For example, are actual snuff films porn or obscene? What about porn depicting an adult having sex with a three year old child? Not that I claim to know where we should draw the line, but the definition of obscene can not be entirely relativistic.

Ya know, I'm feeding the troll here and everything but I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the regulated monopoly telco system provided much more reliable service then anything that has come since (even newer technologies can't compete with POTS for uptime) and the typical Government oversight provided a lot more protection to the consumer then people think.

Billing problem with landline? Dispute the charges and they have to investig

"You think all that routing, networking and software you use was invented in the US? Oh, ok."

Routing and networking... goes back to the packet switched networks in ARPANET, ALOHANET in the 70's. Or perhaps you are refering to the TCP/IP stack we use today. Oops, you lose there again - Windows makes use (at least when it was first becoming network aware) largely of the Berkeley IP stack from over there in California. *BSD obviously uses this stack. Other operatin g systems do as well, directly, or in translation. What has come around since then has been similar to the advances in automobile engines in the past 50 years... bolt-ons that may offer some improvement, are nice to have, but not necessary in the least. Who needs anything more than telnet ftp, usenet and gopher? The intarweb addition by CERN was nice, but "has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move".

"Other nations that carry it to where it is today."

I agree that the useful stuff comes from places other than the US. Who can deny the catchiness of the Yatta craze? SSH is awesome. Countless other things as well.

The UN did not make the internet, it was a project of US military, handed over to private industry. The US has not abused its ability to manage the internet namespace to date. Given its track record, I cannot say the same would have happened had it been in the hands of the UN. I am not saying the UN would not be reliable - that is the topic of a whole different discussion. I am saying that up until now, there has been no reason to change. If it is not broken, do not go give it to someone else to frell.

The ideal solution would be less government intervention from everyone involved, the US included, not more from a bunch of authoritarian regimes.

Agreed. This is not something that should be turned over to highly political groups. The decisions technological aspects of the Internet should be made by a group of qualified individuals, not a bunch of politicians.

I really don't see the issue with this anyway. To me, it just looks like the EU wants to take away the.com,.net, and.org TLDs and number assig

Because other countries use the Internet much like we do, as a major component in much of their commerce. They don't like the idea of a major part of their daily economic and personal lives being controlled by another country where they have no say.

If the Internet were developed in, say, Sweden, the US would be the ones complaining that the UN needs to take it over.

This is kinda the bullshit responce the UN is feeding other people, but its not totally the true reason. The real reason is freedom, and most of the countries trying to get the UN to have control want to censor the internet for one reason or another (China, France, Iran etc) In some cases their intentions are good but extreamly shortsided (europes insesant NEED to block out that they allowed millions of people to be killed right under their nose) Others, like Iran and China, want to use it to keep their pop

I don't know if you've noticed, but the US has earned a reputation for being sort of unstable in their foreign policy decisions lately in the global community.

If one of these countries were to piss us off, and especially if we went to war with them, it's certainly technically feasible for us to disallow them access to our root servers, and even to block all of their IPs from accessing US content.

In addition, organizations like ICANN have already shown that they are prone to cronyism and making decisions based purely on politics and/or profit, and that sort of thing makes other countries nervous.

Countries don't like to be told what to do by other countries. Therefore, it makes sense for a global network to be controlled by a global organization. It doesn't matter that the US built the first part of the Internet. The infrastructure supporting the Internet in these countries was built by them, and they are just as much a part of the global Internet as we are.

ICANN has consistently maintained a policy of secrecy and rejection of public input. They repeatedly refused to let Karl Auerbach, a member of their own board, see their books. They abolished the policy of allowing publically elected directors on their board when public criticism got too hot. They have consistently acted in a manner that shows their primary purpose is to keep themselves in power.

To have an organization that is so allergic to the public be in charge of a public resource is absurd.

Sadly, in the real world governments often respond to non-problems with short-sighted (non-)solutions. We like to give lip-service to the idea of representational government here in the US but the reality is that power is seldom in the hands of the majority. The UN ambassadors really only answer to whomever appointed them, so their voice is even less representational than an elected official.

-VETO power; this HAS to be adressed; it has no place in a gathering of nations.-lack of teeth; there should be a permanent peacekeeping force under UN controll...but this only works if veto power is revoked (or at least drastically reworked)-too much diplomacy...lunacy like certain countries on the human rights commission...that would be like China on the internet-commission

What I never get is that organisations (and countries/corporations etc) are in a way set up like organisms, but always lacking that most effective way for positive evolution to happen: death. The UN charter (and any corporations charter, and every country's constitution) should include sections on it's own death and rebirth (for example a total revision after 50 years). Documents written hundreds of years ago might be relevant all those years later, but they just can't anticipate the way the world has changed, or the changed expectations of people. There's a reason why nature has this thing called death; it enables evolution.

Unfortunately, you can't just go by news reports. You have to look at MOTIVES behind people's actions.1) Why does the US want to maintain control?2) Why does the UN want to take control?

The answer to the first one is usually first given as a rather selfish "it's ours, we invented it" answer. The answer to the second can be deduced if you look at who are the biggest proponents of the UN take-over: China, Brazil, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia (Source [washingtontimes.com]). Once that is established, the answer to the first questi

The U.S. Military Invented the Internet... therefore the U.S. should have control over it.
The Chinese invented guns, therefore the Chinese should have control over them.

You can say it about anything. The fact of the matter is that the internet has evolved because its global. The internet as it is isn't the same as it was when it was a US thing. Many countries depend on it heavily for their economy as the US does, and don't want the root DNS servers hosted by one government. Imagine the next president, lets call him Joe, decides that country X is in some way evil (terror threat? It'd work with the american public) the US could cut off DNS record access to that country, so no domain names would resolve. or they could intentionally fudge them up and send them redirecting to wrong places. Imagine waking up, going to your computer, opening Firefox, and your homepage is now a site telling you that your countries dns access has been halted for war measures. Every domain you try now resolves to this page.

Would this ever happen? Unlikely, but it's still a bad thing for any country other than the US (and Canada... unless the softwood lumber dispute gets out of hand;) )

It's not a matter of the UN having control, its the world, not just the US. Personally I don't want China, North Korea or any other country with a crazy government having root DNS servers, but hell if every country got one (or one per certain amount of capita) then thats decentralized enough for everyones sake.

The downside? China or some country using that power to block their citizens access to certain domains (well, at least stopping them from resolving correctly) As long as their are enough other root dns servers that can just ban getting their stuff sync'd from china then its not bad for the rest of the world, but it's another tool that China/etc can use against it's people which isn't cool.

Norm Coleman is, and always has been, a political windsock. His overriding concern is gaining and retaining elected office; he doesn't really hold to any core value beyond what he percieves is his ticket to office. Consider that he was a dyed-in-the-wool DFLer (Minnesota Democrat) until 1997--just in time to join the rising Republican majority.

That you omit certain key facts about Coleman's victory over Mondale--namely, that Mondale came out of retirement to enter the race mere days before the election after Paul Wellstone died in an airplane crash--speaks volumes in and of itself. Coleman's victory was seated in complex, confused circumstances; to ignore this fact is to lie by glaring omission. (Consider, too, his vocal pique at the fact that speakers at Wellstone's funeral--a man who defined modern hardcore liberalism--had the temerity to express their political views in the course of their eulogies. Classy.)

The one thing you can count on Norm Coleman to do is to ally himself with whomever he thinks will be holding the strongest hand. It's a great political strategy, and you're right--it'll probably help his political ascendency...but make no mistake about it; Coleman is the textbook definition of a facile politician. He'll slip right off the RNC's radar the minute it becomes apparent that the Democrats have the upper hand again--whether that's in one year or twenty.

Lets say you have a neighbor who just moved into a newly built home next to yours. The first weekend out, they're in the yard trying to start a garden and want to water in some plants. Sadly, the outside faucets weren't hooked up, so they poke their head over the fence and ask you if they could run your hose over to their yard just so they could get their garden watered a little bit. You, being the nice guy you are, let them use your hose and water... you're on a well so it's not costing you much of anything.... There is nothing saying other countries can't go and start their own DNS servers. They can provide their own service, there's no obligation on the part of the US to hand over its root servers to anyone else.

Your analogy is fatally flawed. First, there is not one well, but a dozen well systems we (the U.S.) control. Second, nearly half of those well systems and more than half of the actual, physical wells are not in our yard, but those of our neighbors. Third, this is not about two neighbors, but one guy who runs the "well access system" for all the wells both on his land and other peoples land, for everyone in town. Fourth, the neighbors paid to drill those wells on their properties and paid for all the plumbing. Fifth, we (the U.S.) have our little cousins charging money every year for entries in this control system. Sixth, The guy running this control system is a violent psycho who breaks the town ordinances, beats people up, and has been caught outright lying in town meetings over and over again. This guy also has running feuds with about half of town (it's a pretty rough town).

What the U.N. nations are likely to do is just what you suggest, start their own naming service and switch over all the wells and well systems on their own property. And here is where your analogy completely collapses, because while the value of wells is supplying a resource, the value of the internet is in the connections themselves. It is a transport mechanism, not a commodity. What our dear congress critter is proposing is legislation that says all those neighbors can't do what they want with their wells, which they will promptly ignore. It might go so far as to threaten sanctions or poisoning of the existing system if other countries try to switch, which is also useless.

I see no "control" being exerted over the Internet here. What do they fear?

They fear that they will have to keep paying money to use their own networks and they fear that the U.S. will shut off or redirect DNS service to foreign countries. They fear being economically and socially dependent upon a resource that they have paid to develop and pay to maintain, while that resource can be shut off by the U.S., whom they do not trust. For that matter, I thought the U.S. was supposed to be about representation for all and democracy. What is democratic about one country making decisions for the world without giving them any sort of representation? The U.S. should be championing this move to distributed DNS in many countries with redundancy against a single (political) attack. Instead they are claiming to know better than the world, and that they should be able to make decisions for everyone. It is sad how broken, nationalist, and adversarial American ideals have become.